| By Olivia Rudgard On an early morning in September 2021, I found myself on the side of a roundabout in the London suburbs watching a radical protest. The group Insulate Britain was in the midst of a week of sit-ins on motorways to draw attention to Britain's poorly insulated housing stock. Watching from the roadside, I had two thoughts: This is uncomfortable, dangerous work. You sit on the ground with a banner, and people drive at you. Then they yell at you. Then you get arrested. And secondly, a surprising number of the protesters were retirees. Think of a climate activist, and I bet someone young like Greta Thunberg comes to mind. Maybe they're on strike from school or asking gray-haired world leaders at the UN how they can possibly live with themselves for not acting more urgently to cut emissions.  Siblings and climate activists Kathy Fulkerson (left) and B Fulkerson are members of Third Act, a group focused on mobilizing older climate activists. Photographer: Emily Najera/Bloomberg But modern climate protesters are demographically diverse, as I found in reporting for my story about activism later in life. Older people are a fixture of the movement fighting for emissions cuts. That's particularly true at Extinction Rebellion protests: There's evidence that older folks were disproportionately present among those arrested,research from the group's 2019 heyday suggests. Older people — especially older women — tend to show up regularly at all manner of protests, says Graeme Hayes, a sociologist at Aston University in the UK and a co-author of that study. And they play a vital role in legitimizing movements. "They're unimpeachable, because how can you possibly turn around and say the grandmothers have no stake in the future and are somehow troublemakers? It's an identity that you can organize around," he says. For working-age individuals, going to daytime protests and constantly getting arrested is difficult to reconcile with paying off a mortgage and raising a young child. Meanwhile, young adults tend to be financially insecure. But older people usually have time, expertise, a strong sense of civic engagement and financial stability. Two groups have recently formed on opposite sides of the Atlantic to capitalize on those traits and mobilize the gray-haired protest movement: Third Act in the US, and European Grandparents for Climate in Europe. As veteran environmental writer, campaigner and founder of Third Act Bill McKibben put it, "If you want to pressure Washington or Wall Street or your state capital, having some people with hairlines like mine is not the worst plan in the world." Not all later-in-life protesters are risking arrest sitting in front of traffic or throwing soup at paintings. Instead, some use their standing to confront institutions in other ways. Cathy Fulkerson, a 67-year-old Third Act member, found herself facing off against a bank manager after she went into a branch to cancel her card because of the bank's new fossil fuel investments. It was an uncomfortable interaction, she says, but also a worthwhile one. "After leaving and reflecting on that, I was thrilled," she says. "It's good to get under their skin." Read the full story and meet some more climate activist retirees. Subscribe for news on social movements, the energy transition and more. | 
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